


Heartbeat

by Kiterie



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-28
Updated: 2011-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiterie/pseuds/Kiterie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What binds them is something strong than anything else and deny it or not it is there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vernajast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vernajast/gifts).



He can't feel it anymore.  At least that's what he tells himself.  The hard pulse of his heart is nothing more than too much exercise.  The fact that he can hear it thudding and pulsing in his ears like a perfect drum beat even when he's still and quiet means nothing.  If it seems stronger when he closes his eyes it's only because he is focused on it.  It's louder though than the rustle of leaves in the wind, the crackle of the campfire, or even the two members of Hawk that had always seemed incapable of keeping their voices at reasonable volumes.  With one of them gone there was no longer even the scarcest chance of drowning it out.

It's not anger.  Sasuke _can_ still feel that.   _That_ boils inside him on the verge of spilling out.  It beckons him forward, calls to vengeance, and focuses him in a way nothing else ever has.  Anger, resentment, ire... call it whatever they like, everyone knows that he is driven by it and that nothing short of death will cool it.

There is no mistaking it for happiness.  His chance at ever finding that died with Itachi.  He remembered that, had once been filled by it where the anger now rested.  His family, his pride, his brother... they had once been that to him.  There were moments even after they were gone that he could almost touch it, but those moments were false and empty.  Sasuke knew it even then.  Every time he closed his eyes he saw his parents and it reminded him that they were.  Before his brother's blood had spilled down over his hands, Sasuke had believed he would find it again some day, maybe after.  Peace would have been close enough.  When he realized that he had been betrayed not by his brother, but by everyone else... When he had realized there was no going home, there was no peace, and that there had never been even the slightest chance of it that was he'd given into the rage and pushed everything else away.

The feeling that had thrummed for so long inside him was also not sadness.  He had taken away his own right to feel that when he had allowed his brother's eyes to replace his own.  His pain seeped from Itachi's eyes as the only tears he would ever cry again.  They were tears so numb that he wondered if they were his at all.

It was not doubt or fear, those he had cast aside when he'd left the village.  When you were not afraid to die and you no longer doubted that you would there was no reason for either.  He would go forward, he would succeed because death was coming and failure was not an option.

What he _couldn't_ feel, because he couldn't allow himself to feel it was something different.  It was an echo that he saw in blue eyes.  It was everything that he had once been and no longer could be and for every bit of anger that he felt those blue eyes held in forgiveness.  In blind, stupid hope.

The closer they are, the louder and stronger it is. It stills his hand even when the anger tells him to push the blade harder. When anger screams inside him to prove that he's stronger than an echo that he can't, but should have forgotten years before.

He had tried once before to break the bond and the day is coming when he will prove to everyone, including Naruto, that it means nothing.  He cannot hear it for what it is because he cannot allow himself to.

Sasuke closes his eyes and tells himself that he can't feel his heart beat inside his chest, that it doesn't exist, and blue is nothing more than a color.  It's a lie, but he tells it to himself anyway.


End file.
